News   Jul 12, 2024
199 Church Showcases Heritage Facade and Artwork at Street Level
 1.6K     0 
News   Jul 12, 2024
Six Points Plaza Redevelopment Advances With 36-Storey First Phase
 1.2K     1 
News   Jul 12, 2024
Trading Spaces: Can Real Estate Conversion Help Boost Housing Supply?
 446     0 

2015 Federal Election

Admiral Beez said:
Rest of the world is not relevant here. We have no tradition or history of coalitions - the closest we've come in recent years is in 2008 where the Governor-General shutdown Parliament in order to avoid a Liberal-BQ coalition replacing the Con's minority

http://www.cbc.ca/m/touch/canada/story/1.748982

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news...sought-prorogation-ex-adviser/article4370133/

Harper would again argue that the GG must award the gov't to the party that wins the most votes, and without a stated agreement from the Liberal-Democrats I'd say he'd have a strong case.

As long as the number of seats from each province does not change, the provinces may go along with changes to or scrapping of FPTP. The problem though is that true proportional representation means that each vote is equal, but in Canada the smaller provinces have great representation. For example, a vote in PEI is much more powerful than one in Ontario, since in PEI 146,000 people own four seats in Ottawa (36K people per seat), while in Ontario 14 million people own only 121 seats in Ottawa (115K people per seat). The only way to make each voter equal is to crack open the Constitution and its original 1867 acts of Confederation, which would be a huge endeavour equal to changing the head of state.
Click to expand...

We may not have had coalitions at the national level before, but we have had several of them at the provincial level.

Baring any law here in Canada that I may not be aware of banning post-election coalitions, I'm not sure why how it's done elsewhere should be irrelevant. Is Canada somehow so different that it wouldn't work here, or is it just another case of people scared of change insisting that something won't work just because we've never done it that way before?
 
ttk77 said:
Baring any law here in Canada that I may not be aware of banning post-election coalitions, I'm not sure why how it's done elsewhere should be irrelevant. Is Canada somehow so different that it wouldn't work here, or is it just another case of people scared of change insisting that something won't work just because we've never done it that way before?
Click to expand...
Of course it could work here, but there are barriers to overcome which are best tackled before the vote.

The barrier to getting it will be the Governor-General and Harper's defence of Canadian parliamentary tradition and accusations of opposition trickery, same as it was in 2008. My point is that we can immediately kill any chance of the above by the Liberals and NDP stating NOW that if they combined have the most seats, they will consider working together.

When you think about it, doing this after the election will piss off tons of voters for both the Libs and NDP, since many will have voted for the NDP or Libs specifically because they do not like Trudeau or Muclair. It's not all "anyone but Harper" types that are voting Lib or NDP.
 
Well, given that a full two thirds of people have indicated they want a change in government I'm thinking the vast majority of the outrage would be limited to Conservative voters.

Is a plurality of seats required by law to form government? Obviously, whoever gets the most seats will get first crack at it, but if the government falls and there's no coalition on the left, could the second place party be allowed to try so long as they can maintain the confidence of the house? Is a formal coalition even required?
 
ttk77, all of your posts above are full of questions. Perhaps you're trying to make rhetorical points, but if your questions are genuine I recommend you query Google or Wikipedia.
 
Last edited:
WislaHD said:
I think Trudeau managed to differentiate himself during the debate. It is now very clear where he and the Liberals stand compared to the other two on various issues from economy to infrastructure.
Click to expand...

Really? I didn't find Trudeau was substantially different from the rest. With charisma, now that's another story but then again he's younger, has the looks and doesn't have much competition: Harper being a humourless stiff and Mulclair kind of looks like a lumberjack.
 
Re: coalitions
I voted for Harper back in 2008 and was against the failed Liberal-NDP coalition because Dion specifically said "the NDP doesn't understand the economy" and then flip flopped when he realized he could have become Prime Minister and to top it off, this was during the Great Recession. But this time around if both parties are open to it and the public knows about it beforehand, I see no reason why not to try it. It may fail, like Obama LOL, but at least we could say "been there, done that".
 
Admiral Beez said:
Under a true proportional model they and other wacko fringe parties can be entitled to seats.
Click to expand...

I don't think any of the parties are proposing a switch to full proportional representation. The Liberals are advocating ranked ballots and the NDP are advocating a mixed member system. Every time I've heard a serious discussion on the issue of proportional representation it has included proposals to require a base % before a party is entitled to any seats. But even if some of the more "wacko fringe parties" manage to win a few seats it's unlikely that they'd be able to do much damage. Besides, if a sizeable number of people want a Christian Heritage MP in the house shouldn't they have one? As much as I might disagree with their positions, this is still a democracy.
 
Admiral Beez said:
As long as it's beforehand I think it has a shot.
Click to expand...

I have absolutely no idea where you're getting this idea from, but it does not have any basis in law or the Constitution.

Believe it or not, there are unwritten principles inherent to the constitution as well as constitutional convention which guides the Governor General in these situations. They don't just get to make it up as they go. Especially not to introduce an arbitrary requirement of some sort of nonbinding pre-vote 'declaration'.

There is no mystery to what the GG will do post election. In a majority situation, they must declare the party with the most seats the government.

In a minority situation, they declare the party which has the greatest likelihood to have the confidence of the house the government. Ordinarily this is the party with the most seats, but in some situations it can be be a different party. Where this is unclear, the benefit of the doubt goes to the incumbent (in this case the Conservatives).

If the first party to attempt to form government loses the confidence of the house, the GG can declare a different party the government rather than calling an election.

All three leaders stated that they would not request the GG to give them the first opportunity at being the PM unless they had the most seats. This makes it less complicated. However, neither Trudeau nor Mulcair stated that they would not attempt to form government if Harper lost the confidence of the House.

Therefore, if Harper wins the most seats, it is possible that he would be PM only long enough to bring his first confidence vote. If both the Liberals and NDP vote against the PM, then whichever leader, Trudeau or Mulcair, is most likely to have the confidence of the house (probably whoever's party has the most seats) can instantly go to the GG and ask to have a shot at government without calling another election. If one of the other parties votes with them on confidence motions, then they can remain PM.

So, if Harper wins a minority, it is quite possible that he remains PM, but only for a few weeks, after which either Trudeau or Mulcair becomes PM by convincing the GG that one of the other parties will support them (even informally - no coalition required).
 
Ottawan said:
If the first party to attempt to form government loses the confidence of the house, the GG can declare a different party the government rather than calling an election.

All three leaders stated that they would not request the GG to give them the first opportunity at being the PM unless they had the most seats. This makes it less complicated. However, neither Trudeau nor Mulcair stated that they would not attempt to form government if Harper lost the confidence of the House.

Therefore, if Harper wins the most seats, it is possible that he would be PM only long enough to bring his first confidence vote. If both the Liberals and NDP vote against the PM, then whichever leader, Trudeau or Mulcair, is most likely to have the confidence of the house (probably whoever's party has the most seats) can instantly go to the GG and ask to have a shot at government without calling another election. If one of the other parties votes with them on confidence motions, then they can remain PM.

So, if Harper wins a minority, it is quite possible that he remains PM, but only for a few weeks, after which either Trudeau or Mulcair becomes PM by convincing the GG that one of the other parties will support them (even informally - no coalition required).
Click to expand...

We sort of went thought this idea before back in 2008/2009 of the NDP and Liberals wanting to bring down the Conservative minority government to then ask the GG to allow them to form Government instead of going to the polls, but the CPC spin machine sold this as "undemocratic", " kind of coup d'état", and a " undemocratic seizure of power." And the general public bought it.
 
I've said it before, I'll say it again: two-party systems are the chicken way out. And if Harper prevails with a "Cameron majority", it won't be because of the failure of the competition to unite. It'll be because of the failure of the competition. Period.
 
CodeMonkey said:
We sort of went thought this idea before back in 2008/2009 of the NDP and Liberals wanting to bring down the Conservative minority government to then ask the GG to allow them to form Government instead of going to the polls, but the CPC spin machine sold this as "undemocratic", " kind of coup d'état", and a " undemocratic seizure of power." And the general public bought it.
Click to expand...
Not just the general public, but the Governor-General bought it too, and set an informal precedent.

To clarify above, it was IIRC the Liberals and the Bloc, not the NDP that considered pressing the GG to form the government. In the 2008 election, the Liberals had 95 seats, the Bloc 48 seats for a total of 143 seats. This would still be a minority situation, but Harper convinced the Governor-General that the Con's 127 seats deserved the PM and government win. As Ottawan emphatically, if not near-hysterically reminds us, there is no legal or Constitutional basis for refusing a Liberal-Democratic minority (or majority) coalition if they get more seats than the Cons, but this 2008 example provides some guidance to the GG in making his decision this time around.

Best way to counter the GG and to be honest those Libs and Dippers that do not support the Dippers and Libs is to tell the voters up front what they're voting for. Imagine if after the election the NDP joined a coalition with the Cons to block the Liberals - it hardly seems fathomable, but Muclair almost went to work for the Cons and IMO is the most centralist federal NDP leader we've seen in decades. Can you imagine the outrage if this coalition was proposed - Dippers the nationwide would be demanding that their vote not go to supporting Harper and them and the Liberals would be demanding that the GG block the move. Thus, the best chance for coalitions is to state them upfront. And why not anyway, if it's being considered, why not tell us so we can make an informed choice?
 
Lets clarify with CORRECT facts.

The Conservatives had 143 seats. The Liberals 77 and the BQ 49 - so they still had less than the Conservatives between the two of them. They needed the NDP tally of 37 seats to command a majority in the house. No 2 parties had the numbers to defeat the Conservatives.

The other thing to note was that the election was in September 2008 and Harper just received a vote of confidence when the throne speech was passed - so it was quite acceptable to allow a prorogation since it was obvious that he had the confidence of the house. Hindsight agrees with GG Jean since Harper did receive the confidence of the house shortly after the house resumed sitting.
 
You must log in or register to post here.

Back
Top